Rich Lafferty's Journal

(mendelicious mendelusions)

I had a thingy in my to-do list to post an excerpt from a Dharma talk given by Edward Espe Brown, the cook at Tassajara Zen Center and author of the Tassajara Cookbook and Tassajara Bread Book. But I'm listening to the talk now, and there's really no one sound bite I can cut things down to.

So instead, here's a link to the whole thing. Listen to the whole thing if you want. It's a little slow-moving at first and might be a bit too Buddhist for your tastes to begin with, though.

The stuff I was going to post about starts at about 16 minutes in, where Ed starts talking about relating to food, but the best part is around 17:50:

This is also something about your heart. Because most of us get involved with getting it right. I want to do it right. Because if I did it right, and it came out the way it should, nobody could criticize me, nobody could question me... but getting it right is different from what you love.

But the context is so much of it. Download and give it a listen, it's at an easy enough pace that you could listen while doing something else.

I have that "getting it right" problem. That's certainly related to what sent me back to school a couple of years ago, and it's something I have to fight all the time on the cello and on the cushion. What experiences am I missing by trying to make sure mine mesh with what's supposed to be happening?

Also, if you listen, you'll find out what happens when an American Zen teacher ventures into an Apple Store in San Francisco.

Much of the tension (for me) lies in the fact that one learns to see (hear, etc.) from others.

I spent 3-4 weeks in the Arctic searching unsuccessfully for caribou on a hillside near my home. One day I asked someone how often they came into town. My interlocutor looked at me in surprise and said, "They're right over there."

From that day on, I saw caribou almost every day.

But yeah, the very same tendency also leads people to see what others see.